{"id":212,"date":"2014-08-06T14:37:52","date_gmt":"2014-08-06T14:37:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gchristopherscruggs.com\/?p=212"},"modified":"2014-08-06T14:37:52","modified_gmt":"2014-08-06T14:37:52","slug":"christ-in-us-our-hope-for-wisdom-love-and-godly-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gchristopherscruggs.com\/?p=212","title":{"rendered":"Christ in Us–our Hope for Wisdom, Love, and Godly Power"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI ask the Father in his great glory to give you the power to be strong inwardly through his Spirit. I pray that Christ will live in your hearts by faith and that your life will be strong in love and be built on love<\/span><\/b>\u201d (Ephesians 3:16-17, NCV).<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

What does it mean to live by faith? It is not enough that we believe that there is a God, read God\u2019s word, and ask God for help in our prayers. God wants to live in us<\/span>. Paul prays that God will live in the hearts of believers. By \u201cheart\u201d Paul means he desires God to live in our spirits, in the center of our personality, in the core of our human will and desire. God does not want us to know about him. God wants us to become like him\u2014as seen in the wisdom, love, and mysterious hidden power of Christ Jesus.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t remember very much about my seminary Greek. One thing I do remember is the term \u201cSpherical Dative.\u201d A Spherical Dative (\u201cIf anyone is in<\/span> Christ, they are a new creation, the old has gone\u2014behold the new has come\u201d (1 Corinthians 5:17) connotes that we live in the sphere of something or someone else. To be within the sphere of something is to be within the penumbra of its power, for good or for evil. Applied to Christ, it connotes that believers live in the sphere of Christ\u2019s wisdom, love, and power, so that the wisdom and love of God permeates our being.<\/p>\n

We just returned from Ireland on a pilgrimage to the home of St. Patrick. St. Patrick puts the point of this meditation this way in the famous \u201cBreastplate of St. Patrick:<\/p>\n

Christ with me.<\/span><\/p>\n

Christ before me; Christ behind me.
\nChrist in me.<\/span><\/p>\n

Christ beneath me; Christ above me.
\nChrist on my right; Christ on my left.
\nChrist when I lie down. Christ when I sit down.<\/span><\/p>\n

Christ when I arise,<\/span><\/p>\n

Paul says, \u201cChrist in you, the hope of glory\u201d (Col 1:27). This is an awesome vision and promise. When Christ is in us, the glory of God is in us. The hope we have for ourselves and for our children\u2014abundant life here in this world and eternal life in heaven\u2014depends on Christ living in us. We do not necessarily experience this glory today, but we live in expectation and hope of the day in which we will in fact live \u201cin Christ\u201d and Christ will be \u201cin us.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"In-Christ\"<\/a>Here we have a paradox of the Christian faith: We live in Christ\/Christ lives in us. This may also help us understand the paradox of human freedom. We live in the sphere of God\u2019s wisdom, love, and power. God is in and all around us. As we come to Christ, we now are able to consciously, from the core of our being, cooperate with God\u2019s great, wise and loving purposes. We are in God; and, God is in us. We are free human actors, but we are free human actors gradually being transformed into the image of God\u2014and paradoxically into the persons we would choose to be if we were not warped by sin and selfishness.<\/p>\n

Questions for Feedback and Thinking<\/span>:<\/p>\n

Do you sense that Christ is with you, before you, behind you, in you, beneath you, above you, on your right and left, with you when sleeping, sitting, working, walking, etc.? What difference would it make in your life if that were true?<\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Copyright 2014, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI ask the Father in his great glory to give you the power to be strong inwardly through his Spirit. I pray that Christ will live in your hearts by faith and that your life will be strong in love and be built on love\u201d (Ephesians 3:16-17, NCV). What does it mean to live by … Continue reading Christ in Us–our Hope for Wisdom, Love, and Godly Power<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4CzBH-3q","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gchristopherscruggs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gchristopherscruggs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gchristopherscruggs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gchristopherscruggs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gchristopherscruggs.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=212"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/gchristopherscruggs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":215,"href":"https:\/\/gchristopherscruggs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212\/revisions\/215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gchristopherscruggs.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gchristopherscruggs.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gchristopherscruggs.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}